For the Sake of All Living Things (5 page)

Chhuon winked at her. Though delicate, Vathana was nearly as tall as he, and to him she, with her almond-shaped eyes and long black hair tied back in a scarf, was so beautiful he whimsically wondered how she could have been born to him and his also short and stocky wife. A perfect bride, he thought. A perfect wife. Not just beauty but intelligence, with high respect for learning, able to talk of business, politics or religion. How she will help her husband. What honor this marriage brings to our family. “I’ll ask Cheam to get the very best in all of Stung Treng.”

Chhuon moved to where Sok sat at the central table. He spoke quietly as she gathered the few dishes. Samay sat across from them. He had not eaten. His head was buried in a book and he was unaware of anyone about him. As the time for him to enter Sangha monastic training approached he prepared himself by practicing concentration, self-control and self-denial. Soon he would renounce his family and all material aspects of life.

“It’s time we go,” Chhuon announced. “We’ll eat in the city while the truck’s being loaded.”

“Take this with you,” Sok said. She handed Yani a basket with fruit and cooked rice. “One never knows what may happen on the road.”

“Yes, Mama,” Yani answered sleepily. She held her head down but glanced up to Vathana, wishing her older sister were coming instead of Samnang.

Before Chhuon, Samnang and Mayana left the house, Chhuon went to his mother. The old woman, with Peou in her lap, was praying before a small altar, a low table with a painted wooden Buddha in the center. Above the statue was a framed picture of Buddha in repose beneath the bodhi tree. A small picture of Prince Sihanouk, the symbol of the repository of merit for all Cambodia, was to one side. Pictures of the family were to the other. Ancestral tablets, fresh flowers, incense and candles completed the altar. Chhuon knelt and bowed his head to the floor before his mother and spoke softly, asking the old woman’s blessing. She in turn placed her feet upon his shaved head and uttered a prayer.

Ground mist wrapped the village and foothills in a coal-gray blanket. Chhuon started the truck. Beside him, Yani lifted her jacket collar and sleepily tightened it about her neck. She snuggled against her father’s side. Chhuon lit a cigarette. The smoke hung in the humid air, condensed on the windows making it almost impossible to see. Slowly Chhuon backed the truck onto the village street, shifted, then nursed the vehicle over the muck surface toward the bridge. Samnang sat against the passenger door. He stared blankly out the side window. At school the day before there had been another incident. Chhuon felt Yani’s body sag limp in sleep.

“Papa,” Samnang said quietly, “is Grandma ill?”

“No, just tired. With all that’s happened...”

“When Grandpa died, I had terrible dreams. I’m afraid...Grandma...”

“Everyone dies, son. The Blessed One said there shall always be birth, old age, death, sorrow, grief and despair. But he also enlightened the path to the cessation of misery. You’ve discussed the dreams with your grandmother, eh?”

“Yes.” Samnang was reluctant to continue. He’d brought the subject up more as diversion than as conversation. They were silent as the truck crossed the rickety wood bridge over the Srepok River. Chhuon’s eyes searched the water, the bank. His dream rushed back to mind. He offered an inner prayer to the spirit of the river and another to the spirit of the forest. Samnang squeezed the armrest. With Yani asleep he feared his father would bring up his, Samnang’s, school problem.

Beyond the bridge the road split, the main road continuing south. Chhuon turned right. The side road was rough, unsurfaced. He’d driven the back road to Stung Treng many times and he knew every rock, every soft spot which might mire the truck, anticipated every turn, recognized every peasant hut, every field. It descended steeply beside the surging, swirling river, not much more than a riverside trail completely canopied by the jungle. Chhuon concentrated on the path lit by the truck’s headlights. He felt the tires slowly descend into each groove, roll over each boulder.

“Papa?” Samnang said.

Chhuon did not take his eyes from the path. “Yes?”

“Why doesn’t the government attempt to harness the river?”

“Someday it will,” Chhuon said. He tried to speak to his children in an educated manner, almost as equals, keeping in mind the importance of setting a good example. “Someday we’ll build hydroelectric dams—one on the San, one on the Kong. Perhaps with the Laotians a giant one across the Mekong. Then all this territory will have abundant electric power and we’ll be able to regulate the flow of the water for the farmers to irrigate new lands. Someday, Cambodia will be a very wealthy nation.”

“Not the Srepok?” Samnang asked.

“No. The valley’s too broad on this side of the border. South of Lomphat where it crosses into Viet Nam, there’s a hydroelectric dam. Just west of Ban Me Thuot. You know that city?”

“Yes. When Samay enters Sangha, will he study about the land or only about religion?”

Chhuon glanced at Samnang. Perhaps, he thought, Samnang will feel that loss more than any other family member. “I don’t know. Do you think someday you’ll follow him?”

“No way!” Samnang said.

“No way!?” Chhuon repeated the Western idiom which had crept into use with schoolchildren.

“I mean, ‘No, Father.’ I don’t believe a religious life is for me.”

“Every generation of our family has had at least one son follow the path into the monastic life,” Chhuon said. “My eldest brother left our home when I was six. It’s a noble calling. Only within monastic life can perfect awareness be gained. Only then can people learn from the monk the path to deliverance from suffering.”

“Oh Papa, people will continue to suffer. You’re the holy man. Your work feeds more than all the monks.”

“Ha! Who tells you that?”

“You’re educated. You read. You travel. The village farmers look up to you.”

The words embarrassed Chhuon. “We’re talking different kinds of suffering,” he said. He was pleased that his son respected him, yet he was upset that Samnang was so secular. His own son seemed a symbol of the transitions occurring within Cambodia. “Life is suffering,” Chhuon said. “Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, death is suffering. The presence of material things we hate is suffering, and to be separated from objects we desire is suffering. For our wishes not to be met is suffering. Suffering ceases only when we no longer crave...”

Samnang hung his head. Chhuon’s sermons made him shrink. At his father’s next pause he said simply, “I don’t think I should become a monk.”

“Follow your heart,” Chhuon answered. “My soul is filled with joy at Samay’s choice. Though I...I’ll miss him.”

“Papa,” Samnang said sharply, “I don’t understand why, when a boy enters the Sangha he must renounce his family. Why do people say he’s no longer a family member? I don’t understand why the bonze can’t be both.”

“It’s a deep question,” Chhuon said. “This is something we should ask Maha Nyanananda. I know only when a boy approaches manhood, he must renounce his family. It’s always been that way. In two years if he doesn’t follow the monastic life, he may rejoin them.”

Samnang did not answer and Chhuon let the conversation stop. They descended out of the hills. The road surface became smoother though softer and Chhuon wove the truck back and forth to avoid potholes. The road leveled onto the broad flood-plain of the lower Srepok. The jungle thinned, the tunnel of vegetation giving way first to sparse forest, then to intermittent brush and grass, then to cultivated rice fields stretching as far as Samnang could see into the mist. Buildings and villages increased, though were still few and far between. Mayana curled tighter in against Chhuon, pulled her jacket tight and continued dozing.

After a period Chhuon said, “In seven days it will be one hundred days since my father died. When we return home, I want you to see Maha Nyanananda. Arrange for me to meet with him. Bring him six cans of milk.”

“Papa,” Samnang’s voice was again sharp, “why don’t the monks have food like other people? Why must someone—every day—bring them food?”

“Holy men aren’t allowed to accumulate wealth or possessions,” Chhuon said. “Thus material goods can’t tarnish their spiritual work.”

“But Father! Some monks don’t work at all.”

“Eh?” Chhuon pursed his lips. “You’ve spent many days at the pagoda. Do the monks work?”

“Only...I mean...well, Maha Nyanananda. He’s always busy. But even he doesn’t work like the farmers. Not even like you.”

“They administer to our minds, our souls. Because you don’t see them stoop in the paddies or load trucks doesn’t mean their work’s not hard. I seldom load or unload anymore, does that mean I no longer work?”

“But you do work with the farmers.”

“Only as a teacher,” Chhuon said modestly. “Every year there is new rice and each variety must be separately tended. That’s my work: to teach the farmers about the new rice and to help them guard their fields. Monks teach people to guard their spirits. That’s their work. Each new rice has its own weakness, so we plant a little and watch it. Each new day presents challenges to our weaknesses. Those too must be watched.” Chhuon glanced at his son. If the boy was to follow him into business he should be taught everything Chhuon himself had learned through long hours of study. And if his spirituality was to grow, that too must be nurtured.

Chhuon stopped the truck in the center of the road and rolled his window down. Beside him Yani opened her eyes, yawned, looked about and seeing that they were only halfway to their destination, closed her eyes again. “The new IR 8 is semidwarf and resists lodging,” Chhuon said. “That means the farmers will lose less of their crop to the wind. Look at this field. Cambodia grows eight hundred varieties of rice. Most of it, when the grain fills, and that during the windiest part of the monsoons, gets top-heavy. When it lies down like those plants,” Chhuon pointed to an entire paddy where thousands of rice stems made horizontal line patterns indicating the wind direction of the day before, “the plants die and the grain rots.”

“And semidwarfs prevent that?” Samnang asked.

“Yes,” Chhuon said. He rolled his window back up, leaving it open several inches to clear the fog from the windshield. “Not completely though. And there are other problems—more pests, more plant disease. Uncle Cheam says in a few years we’ll receive a new variety, IR 24, which is semidwarf and grows so fast that the grain will fill before the heaviest winds. The farmers will harvest in August, plant a second crop and harvest again in November. Instead of just the late harvest. Uncle Cheam is very optimistic, but I’ve read in French journals that the double cropping requires fertilizer.”

“And we sell that,” Samnang said happily.

“Yes. But most of our farmers can’t afford commercial fertilizers.”

“Then what will happen to the crop?”

“If it wears out the paddies the next crop will be poor, eh? There has to be a balance between what the land receives and what it gives. Just like a person’s spirit, eh? A balance. American scientists are experimenting with a rice that produces three crops a year. That’s fine in rich nations, but here...maybe only those who can afford fertilizers will be able to grow rice. Maybe the peasants will borrow money to buy chemicals. Maybe the price will come down. Maybe they won’t pay back what they borrow. Maybe they lose their land, eh?”

The conversation lapsed. They drove in silence for several kilometers. Then Chhuon said, “We should talk about what happened yesterday.”

Samnang looked at his lap. He glanced to see if Yani was still asleep. “Yes, Father,” he said. “I...”

“I’m concerned about your schooling,” Chhuon said. “If you’re to be accepted into secondary school you must do well now. You cannot learn if you’re not in class.”

“The boys teased me again, Father.”

“You’re smart.” Chhuon looked toward his son. “Very quick. I wasn’t that way. You’ll go further with your education than me. Today everyone goes to school, eh? You’ll go to the university. But...how do you think your teachers look upon it?”

Samnang’s voice was faint. “They called me ‘girlie.’ They say I should have been a girl.”

“They know you were ill, eh?”

“They still tease me.”

“And you...,” Chhuon began. It was hard for him to see his Kdeb in pain.

“I screamed at them. I wanted to hit them. Then I cried.” He was on the verge of tears.

“Did you hit one?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s when they stole your pants?”

“Yes.” Samnang’s head was down, his voice weak.

“And you didn’t go back into class?”

“No! Some of the girls already saw me because Khieng and Heng held me. They said they’d show the girls I really was a boy. If Kpa hadn’t stopped them, I would’ve jumped into the river and never come back. I’ll never forgive them.”

The road smoothed as the small pickup neared Stung Treng. Two boys on Honda motorbikes whisked by in the opposite direction. Chhuon tensed. He watched the bikes in the mirror until they disappeared. Mayana moved restlessly. Without looking up she asked, “Are we there yet?”

“Soon,” Chhuon answered. The clouds lifted, the mist became drizzle. Below the raised-dike roadway paddies glowed green. The road narrowed to one lane. Chhuon strained to see through the film-covered windshield.

“Oh! Stop!” Samnang shouted. “There’s a...”

“I see.” Chhuon’s voice was calm. He tapped the brakes. A squad of soldiers had set up a roadblock. Two soldiers were on the road. Six were visible on the north side, two more on the south. Roadblocks were becoming more and more frequent. Since January, with the incidents in Ratanakiri Province and the rioting, troops had increased their vigilance.

Chhuon stopped the truck. He flashed the headlights, then advanced. Someone shouted. Several soldiers scampered from the north embankment to the south. “They’re crazy,” Chhuon muttered in the cab. “They see me every week.” Yani scrunched up tighter to her father. Samnang rolled his window down. “Roll it up,” Chhuon ordered harshly.

“Father!” Samnang said, shocked at the tone.

“Roll it up,” he repeated.